Friday 28 September 2012

Green's Café

Scanning the seating area of Green's Café on a weekday afternoon, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just walked in to one of Oxford University's many libraries by mistake. During term-time, this café is a silent hive of scholarly activity. Mainly populated by people with laptops, if you're looking for a place to catch-up on the weekend's drunken antics over a cup of coffee, this probably isn't your place. However, if you're looking for a nice cup of coffee, good cake or a decent lunch, then Green's might just be the café for you.

Situated along St Giles, Green's is handy for Somerville College, St Anne's College and Regent's Park. All very nice, laid back colleges, this doesn't do too badly in the pretentiousness stakes, despite being heavily populated by artsy students. If the deathly hush of Green's puts you off then fear not, it's sister café opposite the Westgate centre is in a much livelier part of town. Spanning three floors, if Green's resembles a library then the Art Café is the Sixth Form common room, offering the same great cakes, panini, lunches and snacks  in an altogether buzzier environment.

The coffee at Green's is great, although rather on the pricey side. Strong but not too strong, the café offers all the usual suspects such as cappucinos (cappucini?), lattes and mochas and you can opt for soya or skimmed if that's your thing. Green's also do lovely Teapigs tea sold by the cup which, again, although expensive is worth the extra pence. Offering pots of tea rather than just cups would help the café to notch closer to perfection, but then the lingering students would probably never leave!

Green's all day breakfasts have long been a Sunday-morning institution, promising to provide all the fat and organic meaty goodness you need to kick that hangover into tough and crack on with your fifth week essay. The vegetarian breakfast is also a winner. In the past few years, the café has upped its game as far as breakfasting is concerned and now offers fashionable favourites such as porridge and American-style pancakes with syrup in addition to classic Green's fodder including muesli and bagels. The porridge, while good, is made with ordinary scotch porridge oats and can be a little on the liquid-side for my liking, but the pancakes are excellent and come with a generous pot of maple syrup for drizzling.

Moving towards lunchtime, Green's has a good selection of panini and baguettes which are made freshly in-house. Sizeable chunks of fresh, carby bread, these generously filled panini are not for the faint hearted, offering far more to get your teeth into than the usual coffee chain fayre. If you eat in, your lunch will be served with an attractive but small salad and a dollop of tasty coleslaw to give the impression that you're getting your five-a-day. Top fillings at Green's include the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel, a goat's cheese, olive and pesto baguette and the bacon, brie and cranberry panini, though there is a huge selection to choose from. What's more, in the unlikely event that there are sandwiches left over after 4.30pm, Green's sell them off at £1.50 - ideal if you're looking for a cheap tea on the go. If you want a more substantial lunch, the café offers a selection of hearty pastas and baked potatoes throughout the day in addition to delicious, fresh-tasting salads and homely favourites like lasagne and chicken curry.

Having covered breakfast and lunch, I now get onto the important matter of cake. Green's do a good and dependable selection of cakes, brownies, slices and cookies with both regular and gluten-free options. The brownies are good and quite rich, but lack the indulgent buttery, fudgy texture of those found in newer arrivals on the Oxford Café scene such as Zappi's and the Turl Street Kitchen (reviews to follow). The Carrot Cake is excellent: moist and spicy with a nice, sweet layer of cream-cheese frosting, while the Apple Cake is as dense and moist as it looks, but is a little bland on the palate. Green's chocolate chip cookies are something of a wild-card in that they never seem to be made to the same recipe, some days you'll see large flat shortbread-style cookies with a few chunks of chocolate, other days, Green's will offer chunky, crumbly cookies which are an inch-thick and look more like chocolate-chip rock cakes. They're sweet enough but somewhat dry, causing me to engage in the risky and socially questionable practice of dipping. The thing is, at £1.50 a cookie, I'd sooner dip a Cadbury's Twirl in my tea and spend the change in Primark...

All in all, Green's café is a lovely place to be. Ideal for holing yourself up on a rainy day and getting through some articles, or getting down to writing that essay you've been putting off, you'll be spoilt for choice in terms of snacks and drinks. As with many places in Oxford, the emphasis on organic and gluten-free produce means you can indulge in some (almost) guilt-free snacking, but watch those purse strings as it's very easy to keep nipping back down to the counter...


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